U.S. Will Be Seeking Progress on NAMA At APEC Meeting in South Korea Next Month

U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman will travel to South Korea in early June to meet with trade ministers from the Asia-Pacific region to help promote further progress in the current round of World Trade Organization negotiations, particularly in the area of nonagricultural market access, a U.S. trade official said May 19.

The official said that the meeting will provide an opportunity for trade ministers to identify ways to narrow existing differences over the formula that will be used to reduce tariffs on industrial and consumer goods in the so-called NAMA negotiations.

Asking not to be identified by name, the U.S. official said that the meeting will be critical because it will come just days ahead of the next meeting of the NAMA negotiating group, scheduled to be held at the WTO in Geneva, the official said, on June 7.

Attending the meeting--to be held June 2-3 on Jeju Island, South Korea--will be trade ministers from the 21 member countries of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, United States, and Vietnam.

Only Russia and Vietnam are not also members of the WTO.

Portman said May 4 that some progress has been made in bridging differences over the formula to be used in the NAMA negotiations.

But the U.S. trade official who spoke May 19 said that stark differences continue to exist between the approach being pursued by the United States, the European Union, and other industrialized countries--the so-called Swiss formula--and the proposal being advanced by India, Brazil, and Argentina, which has been criticized by the United States as based on 'already rejected ideas.'

The U.S. trade official said that the United States hopes that countries can agree on the formula to be use in lowering tariffs on industrial and consumer products by the next ministerial meeting of the WTO, scheduled to be held in Hong Kong Dec. 13-18.

Other U.S. officials have said that the aim is to complete the current round of WTO negotiations by the end of 2006.

The U.S. trade official who spoke May 19 said that, if countries agree on the NAMA formula by Hong Kong, they would then spend 2006 negotiating specific tariff reductions on thousands of product lines.

As for the United States, the official said, the administration will be required to submit the 'legal language' of any agreement reached in the WTO talks to Congress 'very early' in 2007 since the administration's 'trade promotion authority' expires at the end of June of that year.